A Reliable Free Image Host

Opening note: please ignore all br tags you will see, those come from the HTML xmp (Excempt) tag, that allows me to display HTML rather then interpreting it. Without the xmp tag, I could not show the composition of the URL within the img tag, because the browser would try to interpret it. So please just disregard all br tags in this post, since those are automatically added by xmp and just stand for Break, line break that is.

1. Hyperphoto…a free image host that will hopefully last 😉

This is the free image host of Canon USA and I have been very happy with it. Within the last 8 months (starting June 2001) of almost daily using it, I remember two short down times.

Plus:

—–

+response time of user interface is very good due to its simplicity

+simple and easy to understand user interface

+you have full control over the file size by modifying the last two numbers before the ….FFFFFF string that closes the picture URL! You can directly type in the width and height you want: …,800,600,FFFFF

Principle: you post an URL of a picture that resides on any webserver, that allows external links to its files. It really is as simple as that.

Including an image in your forum post is fairly easy, after uploading you go to your picture and go from the thumbnail to the largest possible (original size) view. Right click that image, left click Properties and select the whole URL (make sure you select the whole string, Ctrl+A for Windows is handy here) in that dialog box. That whole string goes into the field Optional Image URL on your Post New Message or Post Response Form on any Fora. Congratulations, you just posted your first picture!

3. A working example of a Canon Hyperphoto hosted image

This is the Thumbnail or Preview of the picture on Hyperphoto:

And here is the URL within the img tag of above picture with the dimensions 256 x 192 (width x height). Note that the image tag does not need to be closed by another tag but just by a GT sign. Please also note that the URL is within quotation marks, omitting the closing quotation mark will lead to a famous red cross instead of a picture.

Now follow the image in Original Size 800 x 600

And this is the corresponding URL of above image within the img tag, note the dimensions 800,600.

This is really the beauty of using Hyperphoto: you can directly manipulate its size in its URL! Whereas most hosts will have completely different URLs for different sizes (normally a long string of numbers) without direct access to the size parameters.

Two more chapters that are valid for all image hosts and not Hyperphoto related.

4. How to post multiple pictures in one post

Use the following tag (forget about the line breaks brs here, they come from a special command I have used to display HTML):

1.) Use good album names and think of an album notation before you start hosting images. The better your structure, the easier for you to find the pictures

2.) Do not move your images to other albums after you posted them, they will not display at the new location unless you can edit your post (TZ does not normally allow that)

3.) Picture displays too small: you selectedt the URL of a thumbnail and not of the original image size

4.) EMPTY your browser’s cache while testing and previewing. CAPS for EMPTY because this is really the single most frequent error, that a non-displaying (for other viewers) image is stored in your cache and does display on your PC only

5.) An animated GIF picture will not play while hosted on most image hosts and rather display the first frame of the animation only. Interestingly they work when stored in MSN communities.